Resurrection Mall available now from Down & Out Books.
Look for the newest Nick Forte novel, Bad Samaritan, in January, also from Down & Out Books.

One Bite at a Time

Monday, August 1, 2016

A Dangerous Lesson: Sharon Summers

Sharon Summers
began her relationship with Nick Forte as his receptionist and secretary. Moved
up to general manager of Forte Investigations with a private investigator’s
license of her own. Now she’s a large part of Forte’s conscience, the person—along
with his daughter, Caroline—most responsible for keeping him tethered to the
man he was and not drifting away into the man he sometimes threatens to become.
Forte once described their relationship as occupying “the places where the
relationships of friends, lovers, and families left seams. In the few years I’d
known her, we had become the mortar that held the bricks of our lives together.”

Here an abused wife
has just left Forte’s office.

I stared
at the open door like she might come back. Sharon paused at the threshold. She
knew I’d tell her if I wanted to talk about it, and wouldn’t take it personally
if I didn’t. I filled her in on the other night, and the relevant parts of
today’s conversation.

“I
don’t get it,” I said when she was caught up. “Why would she stay? It doesn’t
matter how much she loves him, or he says he loves her. He’s going to beat her
again, probably soon. Maybe even worse than he might have because I interrupted
him last time. She knows that. I saw it in her face. But she’s not ready to
leave. Have you ever known anyone in a situation like that?”

“Better
than you think.” I rolled my eyes up to look at her. She stayed in the
threshold between our offices. The infamous pile of summonses behind her
partially obscured my view of her beloved ficus. Her voice sounded much farther
away. “Pete used to get rough when he drank. I tried to stand up to him and hit
him back a few times. That just made him madder, and he was too big for me to
handle. All I did was make it worse.”

This
was news to me. Sharon always struck me as the most bullshit-intolerant woman
I’d ever known. Finding out she’d been through something like this was almost
like finding out Henry Aaron corked his bat. Almost. Questions ran through my
mind faster than I could ask them. What I said was, “How long?”

Sharon’s
expression never changed. Her voice never wavered, maintained that far-away
timbre. “Five hundred and forty-two days from the first time he hit me until I
told him I’d kill him if he ever put a hand to me again. I told him as I was
leaving to pick up the boys from daycare. I never went back.”

“Why?”

“Why
didn’t I go back? Or why’d he hit me?”

“Why’d
you wait so long?”

She
gave me a look I couldn’t have identified if I hadn’t seen it twenty minutes
earlier. “I guess I was embarrassed. I know how she feels.” Turned her head to
indicate the door Josie had just left through. “Everyone says hitting a woman’s
a terrible thing. No one wants to admit she married a man who’d do such a
terrible thing, right? So I figured I must have driven him to do it.”

“So
it’s your fault?”

“You
don’t think that way for a while. You think it must be something you’re doing
wrong, or something you should know about. Then you start thinking maybe you
deserve it, because there’s something wrong with you. You know you should leave, but you’re afraid to trust your
judgment because trusting your judgment’s what got you here in the first
place.” The words ran out of her like blood from a picked scab. Just a little
at first, then the momentum built like the early departures were sucking the
others out to join them. “I heard more than you think. I never listen in with
your visitors, but I knew why she was here.”

“How?
I didn’t tell you about Sunday night until just now.”

“She
had that look.”

“What
look?”

Sharon
shook her head. “You can’t see it.
Only someone who’s been through it can recognize it. Junkies probably see it in
other junkies. Gays, too, maybe.” She looked down and away from me and blushed.
I’d known her seven years and couldn’t remember ever seeing her do that. “So I
listened. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t
be. Tell me what you think.”

“Her
parents are immigrants with crappy jobs, right? Her brothers and sisters do
okay, but they’re worker bees. She gets her associate’s degree and this rich,
practically famous doctor marries her. She lives in a great house, has all
kinds of money to spend on her family, nice clothes, someone to clean her house
for her. She must feel like a princess.

“So
he beats up her sometimes. I think he probably does worse than that. It doesn’t
matter, ’cause she’s thinking, ‘What do I have to complain about?’ She knows
nothing’s free. Her parents worked two jobs each. Her brothers and sisters
pitched in for all the weddings. She figures, this is what a nice house costs.
She’ll put up with it even if she doesn’t care about the money and the car
because she’s ashamed to go to her family and ruin their fantasy, too. She’s
living a lie, and she’s Catholic and it’s a mortal sin to –”

“Sharon.” She never got like this. Sharon
didn’t cover things up; she handled them. The altercation after WhirlyBall had
passed over her like a humid breeze: mildly uncomfortable, immediately
forgotten. I honest to God didn’t know if she was about to get violent,
hysterical, or calm down and walk away. And I didn’t want to find out. “It’s
okay. I’ll keep an eye on her.”

“Is
she a client?”

“Not yet.”
Sharon cocked her head, brow furrowed with doubt. “I can’t spot some of things
you can, but I can tell when someone’s about ready to do something. She’ll be
back. And don’t worry. I’m not going to have two Eloise Marshalls on my
conscience.”

Lots of ways to order Res Mall

Worst Enemies, Book 1 of the Penns River series

Click the cover to buy

Grind Joint, Book 2 of the Penns River series

Click the cover to buy

Forte 4: A Dangerous Lesson Available Now! Click the image below to purchase.

Chicago Private Investigator Nick Forte’s official task is to find out what he can about Jennifer Vandenbusch’s new suitor, who fails to measure up in the eyes of the family matriarch, Jennifer’s grandmother. This seems par for the course for Forte, as his personal life has been leading him through a series of men who treat women badly, though none nearly as badly as the Thursday Night Slasher. Forte lives on the fringes of the investigation run by his old friend Sonny Ng until elements of Forte’s case and life dovetail with the Slasher investigation, leading to Forte discovering more about the crimes—and himself—than he wanted to know.

The Man in the Window

"...we see him getting rougher, tougher and darker book by book. There are multiple twists in the end, two cool sidekicks, good action scenes and some pretty nifty Chanderlisms in this book, adding up to a perfect PI read"--Sons of Spade blog

The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of (Nick Forte 2)

It's a kind of authorial magic that The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of works as a tribute and as a story, and that neither aspect interferes in the least with the other… I can imagine this book finding its way into a class on writing crime fiction as an example of how to pay tribute to one's predecessors while at the same time writing a story that can stand on its own. It's an impressive accomplishment.--- Peter Rozovsky, Detectives Beyond Borders, December 18, 2014

About Me

Two of my Nick Forte Private investigator novels (A SMALL SACRIFICE and THE MAN IN THE WINDOW) received nominations for Shamus Awards. I also write a series of police procedurals set in the economically depressed town of Penns River PA, published by Down & Out Books. A non-fiction essay, “Chandler’s Heroes,” appeared in Spinetingler Magazine online in October of 2013.
I live in Laurel MD with The Beloved Spouse.